An integrated business management system should do more than track KPIs, conduct periodic reviews, and launch improvement projects. It should provide leadership with a structured method for connecting strategy, processes, performance measures, improvement activities, and financial results.
Unfortunately, many organizations manage these activities independently. Strategic planning occurs in one part of the organization, performance reporting in another, and process improvement somewhere else. The result can be considerable activity without corresponding improvement in the measures that matter most to the business.
In the video below, Forrest W. Breyfogle III, founder of Smarter Solutions, explains why conventional business management systems often fail to produce the results executives expect—and how a more integrated approach can help.
The Integrated Enterprise Excellence (IEE) system provides a framework for overcoming these limitations by connecting organizational strategy, performance measurement, and process improvement into one enterprise management system.
Business Performance Management System
An effective business performance management system should help executives understand how the organization is actually performing—not simply whether individual metrics happen to be above or below arbitrary targets.
Traditional scorecards can encourage organizations to react to every up-and-down movement in a metric. This can lead to unnecessary interventions, firefighting, and improvement projects that consume resources without addressing the organization’s most important needs.
IEE takes a different approach. Performance measures are evaluated within the context of the processes that generate them. Leadership can then distinguish between routine variation and meaningful changes requiring action.
This creates a more useful management system in which decisions are based on evidence rather than reactions to the latest number.
Predictive Performance Metrics
Predictive performance metrics provide executives with more useful information than traditional red-yellow-green scorecards.
A conventional KPI report frequently answers only a limited question: Did we meet the target this month?
Executives need to know much more.
Is the process stable? What level of performance can the existing process be expected to produce in the future? Has performance actually changed? If nothing changes in the process, what results should management reasonably expect?
Smarter Solutions’ 30,000-foot-level reporting methodology addresses these questions by providing a process-oriented view of performance.
Instead of repeatedly reacting to individual data points, leadership gains insight into the expected future performance of the process. This can dramatically change how organizations manage KPIs and determine where improvement is actually needed.
Learn more about how predictive performance metrics help executives distinguish meaningful change from routine variation and better understand expected future performance.
Strategy Execution Framework
A strategy execution framework must connect high-level objectives with the processes responsible for achieving them.
One of the weaknesses of many strategic planning systems is the gap between strategy development and day-to-day operations. Leadership establishes objectives, departments create initiatives, and improvement teams undertake projects—but the relationships among these activities may be unclear.
Integrated Enterprise Excellence provides a nine-step management framework that connects an organization’s vision and mission with its value chain, enterprise analysis, financial objectives, strategies, improvement priorities, project execution, assessment, and ongoing management.
See the complete Integrated Enterprise Excellence 9-step business management system and how each step connects strategy, performance measurement, and improvement.
This structure helps leadership move from broad strategic intentions to specific actions capable of improving enterprise performance.
The objective is not simply to execute more projects. It is to execute the right projects—those most likely to improve the organization’s most important performance and financial outcomes.
Enterprise Process Improvement
Enterprise process improvement should focus organizational resources where improvements will provide the greatest business benefit.
Many organizations select improvement projects because a manager identifies a problem, a KPI turns red, or someone proposes an attractive initiative. While these projects may produce local improvements, they do not necessarily improve overall enterprise performance.
IEE approaches improvement from the enterprise level.
Leadership first evaluates organizational performance and strategic objectives. This analysis identifies high-potential improvement areas. Projects can then be selected based on their expected contribution to the enterprise rather than simply their local appeal.
This approach helps organizations avoid a common problem: improving processes that have little impact on what matters most to the business.
Moving Beyond Traditional Business Management
An integrated management system should answer several fundamental executive questions:
- How is the enterprise really performing?
- What performance can we expect in the future?
- Which processes are limiting achievement of our strategic objectives?
- Where should improvement resources be focused?
- Are completed projects actually improving enterprise performance?
- Are those improvements contributing to better financial results?
Integrated Enterprise Excellence was developed to provide a structured system for answering these questions.
Rather than treating strategy, KPIs, process management, and continuous improvement as separate activities, IEE integrates them into a single management framework designed to help organizations improve what matters most.
For a broader executive-level explanation, explore Business Management System 2.0 and how an integrated management architecture can connect operations, strategy, data, and improvement.
Learn More
Watch the video above to learn why traditional business management systems often fail and how a more integrated approach can provide executives with better information for making decisions.
To learn more about Integrated Enterprise Excellence, predictive performance metrics, and Smarter Solutions’ approach to enterprise management, visit SmarterSolutions.com.